nd although, here and there, her
beautiful white skin peeps through a tear in the old rags, she seems to
think this better than to be confined in the black shroud of the
sisters. Her little boy has also been provided with a shirt, and is now
being passed around from hand to hand, and lap to lap; for each of the
nuns is eager to caress him. While they are sitting thus, on the best
of terms, the priest of the place comes to have a talk with the abbess.
He suspects something wrong, and stands on the threshold, dumb with
amazement, and devours this strange beggar-woman with his eyes. But the
little rascal of a boy goes up to him, and succeeds in making his
reverence fall over head and ears in love with the strange lady, and
scatter his older sentiments for the abbess to the four winds. A fourth
sheet shows him as he strolls up and down the little cloister garden
with Madame Venus, passionately declaring his love. At the window
stands the pious mother of the convent, torn with jealousy; and it
requires little imagination to foresee that her ecclesiastical friend
has hardly turned his back before this dangerous guest is, under one
pretext or another, thrust rudely forth into the wide world again, with
her little boy--who is tired, and would have liked to sleep instead of
having to wander about in the stormy night. But a house or hut is
nowhere to be found, while, on the other hand, suspicious-looking
groups pass by them: gypsies, who cast covetous eyes at the beautiful
child; and one of them--a wicked, toothless old hag--actually catches
him by the skirts of his little gown. But, fortunately, he glides out
of her hands like an eel, and flies into the thicket, and his mother
after him: who is so lost in thought that she scarcely heeds the
danger. 'Where can all the others have gone?' is the question over
which she broods ceaselessly.

"I don't know yet, myself, whether I shall show any more of her
adventures by the way. Every day something new occurs to me, with which
I might illustrate, both humorously and seriously, how, homeless and an
outcast, this beauty had to beg her way through this sober world of
ours. But, whenever she appeared at the door of simple and natural
beings, she needed to utter no word, and not even to stretch out her
hand. She touched the hearts of all; and every one--though here and
there with a secret shudder--gave her from his poverty as much
as he could spare. Young people, upon whom she had bestowed